How primate porn reveals what we really want

By Helen Phillips

WHEN four male experimental subjects were found peeking at explicit images of naked female bottoms on laboratory computer screens, you might have expected disciplinary action, a review of internet security, or at the very least a new batch of subjects. Not in this case. Instead, Michael Platt and his colleagues at Duke University, North Carolina, actually encouraged the voyeurs to keep looking. They set up a pay-per-view system and even tried bribing them to look at less desirable images, all the while monitoring their sleazy viewing habits in the name of science.

It won’t help to know that those bared rumps belonged to female macaque monkeys. Don’t jump to hasty conclusions, though, because the male subjects mesmerised by these images were macaques too. What’s more, the payments and bribes associated with these slide shows of simian smut were not financial, but rewards or forfeiture of fruit juices depending on what they chose to view.

You’ll also be relieved to hear that there is a serious point to the project. Primate soft porn may just help solve one of the central questions about how our brains work – how, faced with all the choices we have to make every second of every day, we weigh up the options and convert disparate information about them into a common neurobiological currency. The research could even unravel some of the mysteries of autism. Honest!

It began in the mid-1990s, when Platt and his colleague Paul Glimcher, then both at New York University, decided to study how we make decisions. “Neurobiologists were just starting to scratch the surface of trying to understand decision-making,” …

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